1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to heat-transfer techniques. More specifically, the present invention relates to a heat-transfer mechanism that includes a liquid-metal thermal coupling.
2. Related Art
The computational performance of electronic devices has increased significantly in recent years. This has caused an increase in power consumption and associated heat generation. It has consequently become a considerable challenge to manage this ‘thermal load’ to maintain acceptable internal and external operating temperatures.
Portable electronic devices, such as laptop computers (notebook PCs), cellular telephones, and personal digital assistants, pose additional design constraints which make it harder to manage thermal load. In particular, size and weight limitations in such devices can make it difficult to achieve desired operating temperatures. For example, some laptop computers utilize heat-transfer mechanisms that include a heatpipe which transports heat from a heat source, such as a processor chip, to a condenser. Heatpipes are efficient at transporting heat, but because of fluidic and thermodynamic losses, the total length of the heatpipes in laptop computers is effectively constrained to be about 150 mm. Moreover, heatpipes typically do not offer mechanical flexibility. Unfortunately, these constraints pose problems in the design and layout of heat-transfer mechanisms in such systems.
Hence, what is needed are heat-transfer mechanisms that overcome the problems listed above.